Table of contents

Just over one hundred years ago, Ernest Rutherford presented an interpretation of alpha-particle scattering experiments, performed a couple of years earlier by Geiger and Marsden, to the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. The work was summarised shortly afterwards in a paper in the Philosophical Magazine. He postulated that a dense speck of matter must exist at the centre of an atom (later to become known as the nucleus) if the details of the experiments, particularly the yield of alpha particles scattered through large angles, were to be explained. The nuclear hypothesis, combined with the experimental work by Moseley on X-rays and Bohr's theoretical ideas, both also initiated at the Victoria University of Manchester, established our view of atomic structure and gave birth to the field of nuclear physics.

The Rutherford Centennial Conference on Nuclear Physics was held at The University of Manchester in August 2011 to celebrate this anniversary by addressing the wide range of contemporary topics that characterise modern nuclear physics. This set of proceedings covers areas including nuclear structure and astrophysics, hadron structure and spectroscopy, fundamental interactions studied within the nucleus and results of relativistic heavy-ion collisions. We would like to thank all those who presented their recent research results at the conference; the proceedings stand as a testament to the excitement and interest that still pervades the pursuit of this field of physics.

We would also like to thank those who contributed in other ways to the conference. To colleagues at the Manchester Museum of Science and Industry for putting together an exhibition to coincide with the conference that included the manuscript of the 1911 paper, letters, notebooks and equipment used by Rutherford. These items were kindly loaned by Cambridge and Manchester Universities. Winton Capital generously supported this exhibition. We would also like to thank Professor Mary Fowler, Rutherford's great-granddaughter, and Professor Stephen Watts, Head of the School of Physics and Astronomy at Manchester, for opening the exhibition as part of the welcome reception for the conference. The reception was only possible with support from Canberra Industries.

We are grateful to His Excellency Mr Derek Leask, New Zealand High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, to Professor Rod Coombs, Deputy President of The University of Manchester, and to Professor David Phillips, the President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, for their contributions to the formal opening of the conference.

Manchester City Council kindly supported a civic reception hosted by the Lord Mayor of the City of Manchester, Councillor Harry Lyons JP, at Manchester Town Hall. The Ogden Trust helped support the conference dinner and Professor George Dracoulis provided an entertaining after dinner speech. Thank you for these contributions to the social programme of the conference.

In addition to the exhibition at the Museum, which was open to the public until October 2011, the conference programme also included a series of public evening lectures and we are grateful both to the speakers (David Jenkins, Alan Perkins and John Roberts) and to those providing support for the public engagement activities (the Institute of Physics Nuclear Physics Group, the Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine, the Nuclear Institute and the Science and Technology Facilities Council).

We would also like to thank the European Physical Society for providing conference travel grants to a number of young scientists.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the other members of the UK Organising Committee for their help in making the conference a success and for their work in putting these proceedings together. In addition, the International Advisory Committee provided essential advice that contributed to the selection of the plenary speakers who were without exception engaging, interesting and entertaining, giving a really excellent set of presentations.

Finally we are also pleased to express our thanks to the Conference Office of the Institute of Physics for their invaluable support in organising this event. We are especially grateful to Dawn Stewart for her responsive and efficient day-to-day handling of this event, as well as to Claire Garland for her planning and management of this event.

This conference is the second in a series of conferences that began with the Rutherford Jubilee Conference held in Manchester in 1961, which is described in one of the contributions to these proceedings. I do hope that at least some of the delegates from the Centennial Conference will be able to attend the next one, fifty years hence in 2061, just as we were honoured to have some of the Jubilee delegates with us for the Centennial. If I am still around, I doubt that I will have the energy then to be conference chair. I would also not like to attempt to predict the plenary programme, but I hope that it will be as vibrant and exciting as the 2011 conference.

Professor Sean J FreemanConference Chair On behalf of the UK Organising Committee

Ernest Rutherford (Photograph courtesy of The University of Manchester)

Edited by: Sean Freeman (The University of Manchester) Andrei Andreyev (University of the West of Scotland/The University of York) Alison Bruce (University of Brighton) Alick Deacon (The University of Manchester) Dave Jenkins (University of York) Dave Joss (University of Liverpool) Douglas MacGregor (University of Glasgow) Paddy Regan (University of Surrey) John Simpson (University of Daresbury) Garry Tungate (University of Birmingham) Bob Wadsworth (University of York) Dan Watts (University of Edinburgh)

International Advisory Panel: A Aprahamian (Notre Dame, USA) J Äystö (Jyväskylä, Finland) F Aziaez (Orsay, France) J-P Blaizot (Saclay, France/ECT, Italy) A Bracco (Milan, Italy) H Caines (Yale, USA) C W de Jaeger (JLAB, USA) J Dilling (TRIUMF, Canada) J Dobacewski (Warsaw, Poland) G Dracoulis (ANU, Australia) S J Freedman (LBL, USA) M Hass (Weizmann Institute, Israel) M Huyse (Leuven, Belgium) P Jones (Birmingham, UK) D Khao (Hanoi, Vietnam) R Krücken (Munich, Germany) K Langanke (Darmstadt, Germany) C Lister (Argonne, USA) G A Miller (University of Washington, USA) D Morrissey (MSU, USA) T Motobayashi (RIKEN, Japan) S Nagamiya (J-PARC, Japan) W Nazarewicz (ORNL, USA) S Mullins (iThemba, South Africa) T Nakamura (Tokyo, Japan) P Roussel Chomaz (GANIL, France) R Ribas (Sao Paolo, Brazil) M Vanderhaeghen (Mainz, Germany) U Wiedner (Uppsala, Sweden) F Xu (Peking University, China) Q Zhao (IHEP, Bejing) W Zajc (Columbia, USA)

All papers published in this volume of Journal of Physics: Conference Series have been peer reviewed through processes administered by the proceedings Editors. Reviews were conducted by expert referees to the professional and scientific standards expected of a proceedings journal published by IOP Publishing.

When Ernest Rutherford became Professor of Physics at Manchester University in 1907, he brought with him the research field in which he had played a leading role over the previous few years: radioactivity. Rutherford turned the Manchester physics lab over to studies of radioactivity and radiation, and through his own work and that of his many collaborators and students, established Manchester as a major international centre in atomic physics. It was out of this powerhouse that the nuclear theory of the atom emerged in 1911.

In 1917, Rutherford 'disintegrated' the nitrogen nucleus using α-particles, opening up the possibility of nuclear structure. At Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory from 1919, Rutherford and his co-workers began to explore the constitution of the nucleus. With Chadwick, Aston and others, Rutherford turned his research school to the emergent field of nuclear physics – a field he dominated (though not without controversy) until his death in 1937.

Exploring the intellectual, material and institutional cultures of early twentieth century physics, this paper will outline the background to Rutherford's career and work, the experimental and theoretical origins of nuclear theory of the atom and the early development of nuclear physics.

An attempt is made to review a small fraction of what has happened in Nuclear Physics after Rutherford, some milestones and the shifting focus of the field. In a hundred years enormous progress had been made, but there is still a great deal about the properties of hadronic matter that we do not understand, matter that makes up virtually all of the visible mass in our Universe.

At least one neutrino has a mass of about 50 meV or larger. However, the absolute mass scale for the neutrino remains unknown. Furthermore, the critical question: Is the neutrino its own antiparticle? is unanswered. Studies of double beta decay offer hope for determining the absolute mass scale. In particular, zero-neutrino double beta decay (0νββ) can address the issues of lepton number conservation, the particle-antiparticle nature of the neutrino, and its mass. A summary of the recent results in 0νββ, and the related technologies will be discussed in the context of the future 0νββ program.

The past 40 years have taught us that nucleons are built of constituents that carry colour charges with interactions governed by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). How experiments (past, present and future) at Jefferson Lab probe colourless nuclei to map out these internal colour degrees of freedom is presented. When combined with theoretical calculations, these will paint a picture of how the confinement of quarks and gluons, and the structure of the QCD vacuum, determine the properties of all (light) strongly interacting states.

The combination of inclusive and exclusive electron scattering data from JLab in kinematic regimes that were not reachable before, together with the analysis and interpretation of older data from hadronic reactions at BNL is finally revealing the details of short-range nucleon-nucleon correlations in nuclei. The most significant result is the demonstration of the dominance of correlated np pairs over pp and nn pairs. I will review these results, discuss them in terms of short-range tensor-force dominance and also discuss the connection to the EMC effect.

Experiments to determine the electric and magnetic form factors of nucleons have been performed for over half a century. This article gives an overview of the current state of our knowledge and discusses new features discovered in recent high precision experiments.

Many of the most exotic neutron-proton asymmetric nuclei are produced in relatively small numbers in high-energy fragmentation reactions. They are produced as fast secondary beams with energies of 100 MeV per nucleon or more. Developments made and recent results that both exploit and assess fast one- and two-nucleon removal reactions from such secondary beams are reviewed. This includes very recent work that interfaces the sudden, eikonal reaction models used with more ab-initio nuclear structure inputs. The potential use of neutron pick-up reactions to study particle-like states in exotic nuclei is also outlined.

Measurements of reactions with relativistic radioactive beams provide powerful tools to extract properties of short-lived nuclei and nuclear matter. A brief overview is given by selecting a few examples with emphasis on knockout reactions and heavy-ion induced electromagnetic excitation. The latter is being utilized to extract the collective dipole response of exotic nuclei, e.g., to study the Pygmy dipole resonance which is related to the neutron skin in heavy neutron-rich nuclei. Knockout reactions are being used to study the shell structure of exotic nuclei. They give also access to investigate the role of nucleon-nucleon correlations in nuclei and nuclear matter as a function of neutron-proton asymmetry. A new technique based on a fully exclusive measurement of quasi-free knockout reactions in inverse kinematics is discussed.

The emergence of clustering in light nuclear systems is explored using the deformed harmonic oscillator as a starting point. The experimental evidence for various geometrical arrangements of clusters in carbon-12 is discussed.

A new generation of calculations for light nuclei based on realistic two and three-nucleon interactions is being developed. The project is very much a "work in progress" and experimental tests of the predicted wave functions help refine the computational methods and better constrain the modeling of important three-body correlations. However, to be useful, the data need to be both accurate and precise. I will present new measurements of electromagnetic matrix elements of the A = 10 nuclei ¹⁰C, ¹⁰B and ¹⁰Be as an example of the interplay between measurement and calculation, and discuss some successes and open challenges.

Early November 2010, the LHC collided for the first time heavy ions, Pb on Pb, at a centre-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV/nucleon. This date marked both the end of almost 20 years of preparing for nuclear collisions at the LHC, as well as the start of a new era in ultra-relativistic heavy ion physics at energies exceeding previous machines by more than an order of magnitude. This contribution summarizes some of the early results from all three experiments participating in the LHC heavy ion program (ALICE, ATLAS, and CMS), which show that the high density matter created at the LHC, while much hotter and larger, still behaves like the very strongly interacting, almost perfect liquid discovered at RHIC. Some surprising and even puzzling results are seen in particle ratios, jet-quenching, and Quarkonia suppression observables. The overall experimental conditions at the LHC, together with its set of powerful and state-of-the-art detectors, should allow for precision measurements of quark-gluon-plasma parameters like viscosity and opacity.

With the Large Hadron Collider, nuclear collisions have reached the TeV scale for the first time. This large jump in energy from its predecessor, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, indicates that a new discovery regime is open in QCD at high temperatures and densities. Indeed, the first data are already showing the potential of the LHC to go far beyond our present knowledge in the field. In particular new observables, reconstructed jets, are fully available and data have already been published. These new tools promise to provide an unprecedented characterization of the properties of the medium produced. I will review all new opportunities at the LHC in the hard-QCD sector, especially the case of jets, from a theoretical perspective. I will comment on the latest developments, the relation of the present data from RHIC and the LHC, the limitations of the present formalisms and how these limitations are being overcome.

Nuclear masses are indispensable ingredients in numerous physics applications ranging from nuclear structure physics, where, e.g., the shell closures and nucleon correlation energies can be studied by accurate mass measurements, via the nuclear astrophysics, where the masses of nuclei far from the valley of β-stability determine the pathways of, e.g., rp-and r-processes of nucleosynthesis in stars, to tests of the standard model and fundamental interactions, where, e.g., the very-accurate masses of parent and superallowed β-decay daughter nuclei serve as one of inputs for the checking of the unitarity of the CKM quark-mixing matrix. In this review we focus on recent direct mass measurements conducted with storage rings and Penning trap mass spectrometry. Although these measurements have a broad impact, we restrict our discussion on two topics, namely nuclear astrophysics and neutrino physics.

The neutron drip line represents the boundary of nuclei in the neutron-rich side of the nuclear chart. In the vicinity of the neutron drip line, we often observe 'neutron halo' structure. We discuss how the neutron halo nuclei are studied by the breakup reactions at relativistic energies. Coulomb breakup is the dominant process in the breakup with a heavy target, such as Pb. In the Coulomb breakup of halo nuclei, enhancement of the electric dipole strength at low excitation energies (soft E1 excitation) is observed as a unique property for halo nuclei. The mechanism of the soft E1 excitation and its spectroscopic significance is shown as well as the applications of the Coulomb breakup to the very neutron rich ²²C and ³¹Ne, which was measured at 230-240 MeV/nucleon at the new-generation RI beam facility, RIBF(RI Beam Factory), at RIKEN. Evidence of halo structures for these nuclei is provided as enhancement of the inclusive Coulomb breakup, which is a useful tool for the low-intense secondary beam. We also show that the breakup with a light target (C target), where nuclear breakup is a dominant process, can be used to extract the spectroscopic information of the removed neutron. The combinatorial analysis was found very useful to extract more-detailed information such as the spectroscopic factor and the separation energy. Prospects of the breakup reactions on neutron-drip line nuclei at RIBF at RIKEN are also briefly presented.

We review the nuclear physics that is associated with the outbursts of Type Ia (thermonuclear) supernova explosions and with the thermonuclear runaway events that define the outbursts of both classical novae and recurrent novae. We describe how distinguishing characteristics of these two classes of astrophysical explosion are strongly dependent both upon fuel ignition in degenerate matter and upon the rates of critical charged-particle reaction rates and weak interaction rates. In this centennial celebration of the important contributions of Rutherford and his collaborators to our understanding of the structure of the nucleus of an atom, it is quite interesting to note the evolution of the α-particle scattering experiments described in Rutherford's seminal paper (Rutherford 1911) to current studies of α-particle induced reactions and their defining roles in studies of stellar, nova, and supernova nucleosynthesis. We identify and discuss for example: (1) the manner in which (α, p) reactions in proximity to the Z = N line carry the major flows from ¹²C and ¹⁶O to ⁵⁶Ni in Type Ia supernovae; and (2) the critical role of the ¹⁵O(α, γ)¹⁹Ne reaction in possibly effecting "breakout" of the Hot CNO cycles at the highest temperatures achievable in Classical Novae. In this contribution, we first review the current status our understanding of Type Ia supernova events and then that of Classical Novae.

Nuclear physics plays a crucial role in various aspects of core collapse supernovae. The collapse dynamic is strongly influenced by electron captures. Using modern many-body theory improved capture rates have been derived recently with the important result that the process is dominated by capture on nuclei until neutrino trapping is achieved. Following the core bounce the ejected matter is the site of interesting nucleosynthesis. The early ejecta are proton-rich and give rise to the recently discovered νp-process. Later ejecta might be neutron-rich and can be one site of the r-process. The manuscript discusses recent progress in describing nuclear input relevant for the supernova dynamics and nucleosynthesis.

I present an ab initio calculation of the spectrum of ¹²C, including also the famous Hoyle state. Its structure is discussed and a new interpretation of clustering in nuclear physics is given.

When Rutherford, Geiger and Marsden discovered the atomic nucleus in 1909 in Manchester, they at the same time also laid the foundations for the most successful method to study the structure of nuclei and nucleons. They found a point-like scattering centre inside the atom and identified it with the atomic nucleus and the theoretical description of this process has been known as Rutherford scattering ever since. The deviation between the theoretical description for a point-like scattering centre and experimental data has since been used to reveal information about the structure of the nucleus as well as the nucleon. There has been a continuous development from Hofstadters experiments in the 1950s, over the SLAC experiments in the 60s and 70s to the the HERA experiments at DESY and the experimental programme at Jeffersonlab. In this paper I am presenting the most recent results in Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering from the Hermes experiment at DESY, taken with a high density unpolarised target and a recoil detector in 2006/7.

One of the fundamental questions in the field of subatomic physics is what happens to matter when densities and temperatures are reached which prevailed in the first microseconds after the Big Bang and which might still prevail in the core of dense neutron stars. At these temperatures and densities, matter is predicted to be in a novel state were quark and gluon degrees of freedom propagate over large distances, in contrast to ordinary matter where the quark and gluons are confined inside hadrons. The aim of heavy-ion physics is to create such a state of matter in the laboratory by colliding heavy nuclei at relativistic energies. At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, lead on lead collisions have recently become available with unprecedented collision energies of 2.76 TeV per nucleon pair. In these proceedings we will discuss how the first anisotropic flow measurements at the LHC contribute to our current understanding of this state of matter.

Recent progress in lattice QCD is reviewed with special emphasis on the lattice nuclear force and lattice baryon forces.

At high energy, the gluon distribution in nuclei reaches large densities and eventually saturates due to recombinations, which plays an important role in heavy ion collisions at RHIC and the LHC. The Colour Glass Condensate (CGC) provides a framework for resumming these effects in the calculation of observables. In this talk, I present its application to the description of the early stages of heavy ion collisions.

Throughout the history of nuclear structure studies, searches for new phenomena have been carried out at the extremes. These extremes can be described in terms of nuclear excitation energy, spin, or in terms of proton or neutron number through the production of exotic nuclei far from stability. One extreme which has always been a centre for activity is that of mass and proton number - the desire to create new chemical elements and understand their nuclear structure. New elements up to proton number Z = 118 have been created in the laboratory, but by nature these experiments cannot provide extensive information concerning nuclear structure. The extremely small production cross sections only allow a handful of atoms to be produced in a particular experiment. Over the past decade or so, experimental techniques have been developed which now allow detailed nuclear structure studies of nuclei with proton number Z of over 100. The current status of the field and some recent highlights from these studies are reviewed.

We discuss possibilities of identifying open charm effects in direct production processes, and propose that direct evidence for the open charm effects can be found in e⁺e⁻ → J/ψπ⁰. A unique feature with this process is that the D* + c.c. (where c.c. stands for charge conjugation) open channel is located in a relatively isolated energy, i.e. ~ 3.876 GeV, which is sufficiently far away from the known charmonia ψ(3770) and ψ(4040). Due to the dominance of the isospin-0 component at the charmonium energy region, an enhanced model-independent cusp effect between the thresholds of D^0*0 + c.c. and D⁺D^*− + c.c. can be highlighted. An energy scan over this energy region in the e⁺e⁻ annihilation reaction can help us to understand the nature of X(3900) recently observed by Belle Collaboration in e⁺e⁻ → D + c.c, and establish the open charm effects as an important non-perturbative mechanism in the charmonium energy region.

Eta photoproduction experiments have proven a useful tool in the search for narrow nucleon resonances. In recent years, there has been much interest in the possible existence of the N*(1685) narrow nucleon resonance. Several experiments have been performed that rely on extracting neutron observables from deuteron target data. These have shown some evidence of narrow structure, however, no structure was observed on the proton channel. Within the A2 collaboration at Mainz, a more detailed study has been undertaken using eta photoproduction on an LH2 target (γp → ηp); it has high resolution and high precision, in an attempt to overcome the predicted low photocoupling between the N*(1685) and the proton. This paper provides an overview of the experiment and detector systems, and shows the current state of the data analysis. The γp → ηp total cross section is presented for the 2γ η-decay channel. This shows no evidence of the N*(1685) in η photoproduction on the proton.

A new transversely polarised frozen spin target has been developed at MAMI which will be used in conjunction with the photon tagger and the Crystal Ball detector. The new target permits a major new programme of accurate measurement of polarisation observables in meson photoproduction. This contribution presents some of the preliminary analysis from experimental data taken near the threshold and in the region of the Δ(1232) resonance. Observables will be obtained for the pπ⁰ and nπ⁺ final states.

The N* programme at CLAS in Jefferson Lab is dedicated to the study of the spectrum of baryon resonances and the search for missing resonances. Recent developments in polarized beams and targets at CLAS have made it possible to measure many of the single and double polarization observables which are necessary to disentangle the contributing processes. In particular, CLAS is well on the way to making the first complete measurement on pseudoscalar meson production. The current status of the N* program is presented together with preliminary results from recently completed Kaon Photoproduction experiments.

The extraction of polarisation observables from photoproduction experiments provides an insight into the spectrum of nucleon resonances and the "missing resonance" problem. Experiments carried out at JLab, Mainz and Bonn cover a wide range of reactions, which will soon result in the first "complete measurement" in pseudoscalar meson photoproduction. Traditionally, these measurements have been analysed using frequentist statistics, where parameters are extracted by fitting distributions. An alternative method is the application of Bayesian statistics, where any existing knowledge about the results can be used in the initial conditions. One such application of this is nested sampling. This work discusses nested sampling and how it can be applied to the extraction of spin observables.

The COMPASS experiment at CERN collected a large set of data with hadron beams (p, πK) and different targets (H₂, Pb, Ni, W) in the years 2008 and 2009. The main goal is the search for exotic bound states of quarks and gluons (glueballs, hybrids) and several preliminary results from the ongoing analysis have already emerged.

The production of exotic states is known to be favoured in glue-rich environments, e.g. so-called OZI-forbidden processes. The Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka (OZI) rule states that processes with disconnected quark line diagrams are suppressed. As a consequence, states with an s component should be suppressed with respect to states containing mainly u and d quarks. The numerous reported violations of the OZI rule show that the underlying physics is more complicated. By studying the degree of OZI violation a lot can learned about the production mechanism and possibly also about the nucleon structure itself. The uniquely large COMPASS data sample allows for detailed studies with respect to kinematic variables (e.g.x_F). Results from the ongoing analysis on the comparison of ω and ϕ vector mesons production in pp → pp (ω/ϕ) are presented and an outlook on the prospect of spin alignment measurements with COMPASS is given.

The aim of the COMPASS hadron programme is to study the light-quark hadron spectrum, and in particular, to search for evidence of hybrids and glueballs. COMPASS is a fixed-target experiment at the CERN SPS that features a two-stage spectrometer with high momentum resolution and wide acceptance. It also provides particle identification and calorimetry. A short pilot run in 2004 resulted in the observation of a spin-exotic state with J^PC = 1⁻⁺ consistent with the debated π₁(1600) resonance. In addition, Coulomb production data at low momentum transfer provide a test of Chiral Perturbation Theory. During 2008 and 2009, a world leading data set was collected with hadron beam which is currently being analysed. The unprecedentedly large number of events allows for a thorough decomposition of the data into spin states. The COMPASS hadron data span over a broad range of channels and shed light on several different aspects of QCD.

The COMPASS experiment is a fixed target experiment at the CERN SPS using muon and hadron beams for the investigation of the spin structure of the nucleon and hadron spectroscopy. The main objective of the muon physics program is the study of the spin of the nucleon in terms of its constituents, quarks and gluons. COMPASS has accumulated data during 6 years scattering polarized muons off longitudinally or transversely polarized deuteron (⁶LiD) or proton (NH₃) targets.

Results for the gluon polarization are obtained from longitudinal double spin cross section asymmetries using two different channels, open charm production and high transverse momentum hadron pairs, both proceeding through the photon-gluon fusion process. Also, the longitudinal spin structure functions of the proton and the deuteron were measured in parallel as well as the helicity distributions for the three lightest quark flavours.

With a transversely polarized target, results were obtained with proton and deuteron targets for the Collins and Sivers asymmetries for charged hadrons as well as for identified kaons and pions. The Collins asymmetry is sensitive to the transverse spin structure of the nucleon, while the Sivers asymmetry reflects correlations between the quark transverse momentum and the nucleon spin.

Recently, a new proposal for the COMPASS II experiment was accepted by the CERN SPS which includes two new topics: Exclusive reactions like DVCS and DVMP using the muon beam and a hydrogen target to study generalized parton distributions and Drell-Yan measurements using a pion beam and a polarized NH₃ target to study transverse momentum dependent distributions.

In the last decade quantum chaos has become a well established discipline with outreach to different fields, from condensed-matter to nuclear physics. The most important signature of quantum chaos is the statistical analysis of the energy spectrum, which distinguishes between systems with integrable and chaotic classical analogues. In recent years, spectral statistical techniques inherited from quantum chaos have been applied successfully to the baryon spectrum revealing its likely chaotic behaviour even at the lowest energies. However, the theoretical spectra present a behaviour closer to the statistics of integrable systems which makes theory and experiment statistically incompatible. The usual statement of missing resonances in the experimental spectrum when compared to the theoretical ones cannot account for the discrepancies. In this communication we report an improved analysis of the baryon spectrum, taking into account the low statistics and the error bars associated with each resonance. Our findings give a major support to the previous conclusions. Besides, analogue analyses are performed in the experimental meson spectrum, with comparison to theoretical models.

The effect of the density dependence of symmetry energy on fragmentation is studied using isospin-dependent quantum molecular dynamics model(IQMD) Model. We have used the reduced isospin-dependent cross-section with soft equation of state to explain the experimental findings for the system ₇₉Au¹⁹⁷ + ₇₉Au¹⁹⁷ for the full colliding geometry. In addition to that we have tried to study the collective response of the momentum dependent interactions(MDI) and symmetry energy towards the multifragmentation.

The heavy quark production cross-section and its nuclear modification factor can be measured by identifying single leptons from semi-leptonic heavy flavour hadron decays. In 2010, pp collisions at = 7 TeV and Pb-Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV have been recorded by ALICE at the LHC. We present the preliminary results of lepton p_t spectra (electrons in |η| < 0.8 and muons in 2.5 < η < 4.0) from heavy flavour hadron decays in pp collisions and their nuclear modification factor in Pb-Pb collisions with both the central barrel and forward muon detectors of ALICE.

ALICE is the dedicated heavy-ion experiment at the LHC. Its main physics goal is to study the properties of strongly-interacting matter at conditions of high energy density (>10 GeV/fm³) and high temperature (> 0.5 GeV) expected to be reached in central PbPb collisions. Charm and beauty quarks are powerful tools to investigate this high density and strongly interacting state of matter since they are produced in initial hard scatterings that are therefore generated early in the system evolution and probe its hottest, densest stage. The measurement of the charm production cross sections in pp collisions provides an interesting insight into QCD processes and is crucial as a reference for heavy ion studies. We present open charm cross section measurements in pp collisions at = 7 TeV and =2.76 TeV in the central rapidity region. In addition, the first measurement of nuclear modification factor of D-meson in Pb–Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV is shown.

The ALICE detector at the LHC, designed to perform in a high multiplicity environment, has powerful capabilities for identifying hadrons, both charged and neutral, with techniques including measurements of specific ionization (TPC and ITS detectors), time-of-flight and topology of weak decays. During 2010, ALICE collected samples of 7 TeV pp collisions and Pb-Pb interactions at 2.76 TeV per pair of nucleons. Results on the spectra of the identified hadrons at mid-rapidity, will be presented. Characteristics of charged kaons identified through their weak decay (kink topology) will be discussed in detail. The yields and the transverse momentum spectra of the different particle species provide information about their production mechanisms in pp and Pb-Pb collisions.

Electromagnetic radiation has been of interest in heavy ion collisions because it sheds light on early stages of the collisions where hadronic probes do not provide direct information since hadronization and hadronic interactions occur later. The latest results on photon measurement from the PHENIX experiment at RHIC reflect thermodynamic properties of the matter produced in the heavy ion collisions. An unexpectedly large positive elliptic flow measured for direct photons are hard to be explained by many models.

In an experiment performed at ITEP TWA heavy ion accelerator, the yields of hydrogen (p,d,t) and helium (from ³He to ⁸He) isotopes at 3.5° from fragmentation of ¹²C at T₀ = 0.2 − 3.2 GeV/nucleon on a Be target have been measured. Momentum spectra of the fragments in the projectile rest frame have been obtained in larger momentum intervals than in the previous experiments with heavy ion beams. The main attention was given to the region of high momentum where fragment velocity exceeds the velocity of the projectile nucleus. The obtained data cover about 6 orders of the differential cross section magnitude. It made possible the observation of a transition from the Gaussian shape of the longitudinal momentum spectra in projectile rest frame, expected for the evaporation mechanism, to the exponential shape, typical for the cumulative (pre-equilibrium) processes. The Feynman x distributions for protons are analyzed in the framework of quark-gluon string model. The probabilities of existence of six-and nine-quark clusters are estimated and compared with the results on two- (three-) nucleon short range correlations in nuclei measured at Jefferson Laboratory.

The antimatter helium-4 nucleus (⁴, or anti-α) has not been observed previously although the α-particle was identified a century ago by Rutherford. High-energy nuclear collisions recreate energy densities similar to that of the universe microseconds after the Big Bang, and in both cases, matter and antimatter are created with comparable abundances. However, the relatively short-lived expansion in nuclear collisions makes it possible for antimatter to decouple quickly from matter. This makes a high-energy accelerator facility the ideal environment for producing and studying antimatter. In this paper, we report 18 antihelium-4 nuclei discovered by the STAR experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The measured invariant differential cross section is consistent with expectation from thermodynamics and coalescent nucleosynthesis models, which has implications for future production of even heavier antimatter nuclei, as well as for experimental searches for new phenomena in the cosmos. Future directions of rare and exotic matter searches from STAR will also be discussed.

The ALICE collaboration is investigating single, double and central diffractive processes in pp interactions. The single and double diffractive cross-sections are presented at 900 GeV 2.76 TeV and 7 TeV using an analysis method based on the classification of diffractive gaps. Promising early results on central diffractive processes have motivated the use of additional diffractive counters, which are currently being installed.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) collides lead nuclei at an unprecedented centre of mass energy of 2.76 TeV/nucleon to measure the properties of the strongly interacting matter when partons are liberated from nucleons and create a Quark Gluon Plasma. The highly energetic partons propagating through medium are absorbed and thus probe its characteristics. The highly energetic hadrons produced by fragmentation of these partons, provide information about the energy loss of the original quarks and gluons. The energy loss can be studied by measuring the modification of hadron spectra and correlations produced in heavy ion collisions with respect to proton-proton. The ALICE experiment is one of 4 large LHC experiments. It is dedicated to the study of the strong force by colliding heavy ions. The modifications of high momentum particle spectra and their correlation, measured by ALICE experiment, are presented. The consequences of these measurements on the evolution of strongly interacting matter are discussed.

The prospect of observing parity violation from the strong interaction in relativistic heavy–ion collisions has recently gained great attention. We present the measurements of the azimuthal asymmetry of charged hadron production in Pb–Pb collisions at = 2.76 TeV via the study of a parity even 3- and 2-particle azimuthal correlator. The results for LHC energies are compared to the ones reported by RHIC experiments but also to different models and to predictions from theory. The possible implications of these measurements to the local parity violation and the contribution from background effects are discussed.

Relativistic heavy-ion collisions offer a unique opportunity to study highly excited dense nuclear matter in the laboratory. We present measurements of identified charged hadron production at different rapidities from Au+Au and p+p collisions at 200 GeV. Coulomb effects on pion spectra in relativistic nuclear collisions at RHIC energies will be investigated. The nuclear modification factors for identified particles show distinct meson/baryon dependence. At high p_T the charged pion yields are suppressed by a factor of ~5, while the baryon production is enhanced in Au+Au collisions, when compared to the binary scaled p+p data from the same energy.

If a reliable measurement of a neutrinoless double beta decay (0v2β) rate is made, the effective neutrino masses can be determined from the nuclear matrix element. Theoretical calculations of nuclear matrix elements, however, show some disagreement. To test the suitability of various theoretical models, they should be benchmarked against experimentally measured nuclear properties, such as the ground-state distribution of nucleons in the parent-daughter nuclei, and how they change as a result of the decay process. Single neutron-adding reactions have been performed on the 0v2β candidate nucleus, ¹³⁰Te. The Macfarlane-French sum rules have then been used to determine the single-particle vacancies. Some quasi-random phase approximations (QRPA) can greatly simplify theoretical calculations by describing the ground state of even-even nuclei using a BCS wavefunction. This assumption has been tested using two-neutron removal, (p,t) reactions. The BCS wavefunction appeared to be a valid approximation for valence neutrons.

The observation of neutrinoless double-beta decay would resolve the Majorana nature of the neutrino and could provide information on the absolute scale of the neutrino mass. The initial phase of the MAJORANA experiment, known as the DEMONSTRATOR, will house 40 kg of Ge in an ultra-low background shielded environment at the 4850' level of the Sanford Underground Laboratory in Lead, SD. The objective of the DEMONSTRATOR is to determine whether a future 1-tonne experiment can achieve a background goal of one count per tonne-year in a narrow region of interest around the ⁷⁶Ge neutrinoless double-beta decay peak.

The degree of isospin mixing in the hot compound nucleus ⁸⁰Zr has been extracted by statistical-model analysis of the γ-decay spectrum emitted in fusion reactions ⁴⁰Ca+⁴⁰Ca at E_beam = 200 MeV and ³⁷Cl+⁴⁴Ca at E_beam = 153 MeV. In the case of ⁴⁰Ca+⁴⁰Ca reaction an hindrance of first-step γ-decay is expected because in self-conjugate nuclei the E1 selection rules forbid the decay between states with isospin I=0. The results obtained at finite temperature (T ~ 2 MeV) have been used to extrapolate the degree of mixing at zero temperature

The gamma decay of neutron-rich nuclei around ⁴⁸Ca was measured at Legnaro National Laboratory with the PRISMA-CLARA setup, using the multi-nucleon transfer reaction ⁴⁸Ca on ⁶⁴Ni at 282 MeV. Evidence is found for a large spin alignment which allows to use angular distributions and polarizations of gamma rays to firmly establish, for the first time, spin and parities of several excited states. In the one neutron transfer channels, ⁴⁹Ca and ⁴⁷Ca, states arising by coupling a single particle to the 3⁻ phonon of ⁴⁸Ca are observed, showing the robustness of nuclear collectivity in rather light systems. The work demonstrates the feasibility of complete in-beam γ-spectroscopy with heavy-ion transfer reactions and provides a method that can be further exploited in the future with heavy targets and radioactive beams.

The 2⁺₂ state in ¹³²Te is identified as the one-phonon MSS in a projectile Coulomb excitation experiment presenting a firm example of a MSS in unstable, neutron rich nuclei. The results of shell-model calculations based on the low-momentum interaction V_low−k are in good agreement with experiment demonstrating, the ability of the effective shell-model interaction to produce states of mixed symmetry character.

A new understanding of low-lying quadrupole vibrations in nuclei is emerging through lifetime measurements performed with fast neutrons at the accelerator laboratory of the University of Kentucky in combination with high-sensitivity measurements with other probes. In the stable cadmium nuclei, which have long been considered to be the best examples of vibrational behavior, we find that many E2 transition probabilities are well below harmonic vibrator expectations, and the B(E2)s cannot be explained with calculations incorporating configuration mixing between vibrational phonon states and intruder excitations. These data place severe limits on the collective models, and it is suggested that the low-lying levels of the Cd isotopes may not be of vibrational origin. An additional example of an apparent quadrupole vibrational nucleus, ⁶²Ni, is considered.

In its initial 1911 version, underpinned by discoveries in alpha-scattering experiments, Rutherford's atom model made a gross separation of neutral matter; A veil of light negative matter surrounding a tiny impenetrable heavy positive core. The model had however little to say about the atomic (electronic) architecture and dynamics, hence did not make it straight to the catwalk of physics of those days. Three quarters of a century later, in 1985, new discoveries in collision experiments revealed existence of abnormally large light nuclei, but could say less about the nuclear architecture. History sometimes repeats itself: Like Bohr's ad hoc planetary model (1913) changed the fate of Rutherford's discovery, again Scandinavian inspired ideas on architecture, this time nuclear halos, changed our paradigm for the heart of matter. We comment on the need for a concerted Rutherfordian effort between theory and increasingly complete reaction experiments if further ground-breaking progress is going to be made in halo physics, and physics in vicinities of neutron and proton driplines, and generally in the more widely growing field of many-body open quantum systems, where structure and reactions come together.

Elastic scattering and direct reactions have been studied for the collisions induced by the three Beryllium isotopes ^9,10,11Be, on a medium mass ⁶⁴Zn target at energies near the Coulomb barrier. The elastic-scattering angular distribution of the ¹¹Be halo nucleus shows a deviation from the classical Fresnel type diffraction behavior in the Coulomb-nuclear interference peak angular region. The deduced total reaction cross-sections for the ¹¹Be collision is more than a factor of two than the ones measured in the collisions induced by ^9;10Be. Moreover, for ¹¹Be a large contribution to the total reaction cross-section due to transfer and break-up processes has been observed.

A comprehensive Geant4 simulation was built for the SAGE spectrometer. The simulation package includes the silicon and germanium detectors, the mechanical structure and the electromagnetic fields present in SAGE. This simulation can be used for making predictions through simulating experiments and for comparing simulated and experimental data to better understand the underlying physics.

A large amount of experimental information was obtained on heavy neutron-rich nuclei in the Hf-Hg region during the last decade. In the majority of the cases these nuclei were populated in relativistic energy fragmentation and studied via isomeric and β decays. In addition, deep-inelastic studies gave information to nuclei close to stability. The experimental data were used to establish the sign of quadrupole deformation, prolate or oblate. In the present paper this information is compared with two global theoretical calculations, one which is constrained to axial symmetry and one which considers triaxiality. The prolate-oblate transitional region was reached for (Z=76) Os and Ir (Z=77), as proved by the observation of oblate isomeric states in ^197,198,199Os and ²⁰¹Ir. For Ta (Z=73) and W (Z=74) isotopes no clear evidence of oblate deformation exists so far, with ¹⁹²W and ¹⁸⁹Ta being the most neutron-rich isotopes with spectroscopic information.

The population of ¹⁰²Zr following the β decay of ¹⁰²Y produced in the projectile fission of ²³⁸U at the GSI facility in Darmstadt, Germany has been studied. ¹⁰²Y is known to ß decay into ¹⁰²Zr via two states, one of high spin and the other low spin. These states preferentially populate different levels in the ¹⁰²Zr daughter. In this paper the intensities of transitions in ¹⁰²Zr observed are compared with those from the decay of the low-spin level studied at the TRISTAN facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory and of the high-spin level studied at the JOSEF separator at the Kernforschungsanlage Jülich.

The experimental measurement data on the fine structure of S_β(E) in spherical and deformed nuclei are analyzed. Modern nuclear spectroscopy methods allowed the split of the peaks caused by nuclear deformation to be revealed in S_β(E) for transitions of the Gamow- Teller (GT) type. The resonance nature of S_β(E) for first-forbidden (FF) transitions in both spherical and deformed nuclei is experimentally proved. It is shown that at some nuclear excitation energies FF transitions can be comparable in intensity with GT transitions.

We perform an extensive investigation on the a decay of well-deformed even-even nuclei by using the coupled-channel Schrödinger equation with outgoing wave boundary conditions. The internal effect of daughter states is taken into account in dealing with the interaction matrix and the α-cluster formation. In contrast to the traditional α-decay theories, the five-channel microscopic calculations of this work well reproduce the available experimental data concerning α-decay half-lives and fine structures. Some predictions on the fine structure are made for superheavy nuclei. Moreover, the sensitivity of the results to the model quantities is discussed in detail.

A knowledge of the decay heat emitted by thermal neutron-irradiated nuclear fuel is an important factor in ensuring safe reactor design and operation, spent fuel removal from the core, and subsequent storage prior to and after reprocessing, and waste disposal. Decay heat can be readily calculated from the nuclear decay properties of the fission products, actinides and their decay products as generated within the irradiated fuel. Much of the information comes from experiments performed with HPGe detectors, which often underestimate the beta feeding to states at high excitation energies. This inability to detect high-energy gamma emissions effectively results in the derivation of decay schemes that suffer from the pandemonium effect, although such a serious problem can be avoided through application of total absorption γ-ray spectroscopy (TAS). The beta decay of key radionuclei produced as a consequence of the neutron-induced fission of ²³⁵U and ²³⁹Pu are being re-assessed by means of this spectroscopic technique. A brief synopsis is given of the Valencia-Surrey (BaF₂) TAS detector, and their method of operation, calibration and spectral analysis.

A study of intrinsic state halflife measurements in the N=80 nucleus ¹³⁸Ce has been made using the ¹³⁰Te(¹²C,4n)¹³⁸Ce fusion evaporation reaction at beam energy of 56 MeV. The fast-timing gamma-ray coincidence method was used with a mixed LaBr₃(Ce)-HPGe array to establish the lifetimes of the yrast 6⁺ state at 2294 keV, the I^π=5⁻ state at 2218 keV, the I^π=11⁺ state at 3943 keV and the 14⁺ state at that at 5312 keV, all of which are in the sub nanosecond regime. Reduced transition probabilities have been calculated for the electromagnetic decays from these states.

A recent experiment using projectile fragmentation of a ¹⁹⁷Au beam on a ⁹Be target, combined with the fragment recoil separator and experimental storage ring at ring at GSI, has uncovered an isomeric state in ¹⁹²Re at 267(10) keV with a half-life of ~60 s. The data analysis technique used to resolve the isomeric state from the ground state is discussed.

The shapes of superheavy nuclei have been investigated using Total-Routhian-Surface calculations in a multidimensional space including both even- and odd-multipolarity deformations. Particularly, we have discussed in detail possible shape coexistence in Fm and No isotopes where normally-deformed rotational bands have been observed experimentally. It is found that the heights of fission barriers can be significantly reduced due to the inclusion of odd-multipolarity deformations. In some neutron-deficient superheavy nuclei, there are shallow superdeformed minima with fission barriers less than 3 MeV.

Deep-Inelastic reactions have been used to populate high-spin states in the even-even osmium isotopes and in the iridium neighbors. New isomers have been identified in ¹⁹⁰Os, ¹⁹²Os, ¹⁹⁴Os, ¹⁹¹Ir and ¹⁹³Ir. These include a 2 ns 12⁺ state at 2865 keV and a 295 ns, 20⁺ state at 4580 keV in ¹⁹²Os. Although a number of multi-quasiparticle states arising from prolate and triaxial deformations are expected in these nuclei, the main structures in ¹⁹²Os can be interpreted as a two-stage alignment of i_13/2 neutrons at oblate deformation, in close analogy with similar structures in the isotones ¹⁹⁴Pt and ¹⁹⁶Hg. The isomers are attributed to low-energy E2 transitions at the point of the alignment gains. The isomer observed in ¹⁹¹Ir is long-lived (τ_m ~8s) and probably arises from coupling of the h_11/2 proton to the 10⁻ν/9/2⁻ [505]11/2⁺ [615] prolate configuration that gives rise to long-lived isomers in ¹⁹⁰Os and ¹⁹²Os, although potential-energy-surface calculations indicate that the resultant three-quasiparticle state will be triaxial.

High-spin states of the ¹¹²In nucleus have been populated via ¹⁰⁰Mo(¹⁶O, p3n) reaction at 80 MeV beam energy. Lifetimes of excited states of dipole bands have been measured using Doppler-shift attenuation method. The B(M1) transition rates deduced from the measured lifetimes show a rapid decrease with increasing angular momentum. The decrease in B(M1) values are well accounted by the prediction of tilted axis cranking calculations. These measurements confirm the presence of shears mechanism in this nuclei.

The lifetimes of low-lying transitions in ¹³⁸Gd have been measured using the recoil-distance Doppler-shift technique. The resultant reduced transition probabilities have been compared to X(5) critical-point calculations to assess the potential 'phase-transitional' behaviour of ¹³⁸Gd. The X(5) symmetry describes the first order 'phase transition' between sphericity, U(5) and an axially deformed nuclear shape, SU(3). Although a high degree of correspondence is observed between the experimental and theoretical excitation energies, the large uncertainties of the experimental B(E2) values cannot preclude contributions from either vibrational or rotational modes of excitation. In order to further examine the nature of low-lying states in ¹³⁸Gd, ongoing work is aiming to derive solutions to the Bohr Hamiltonian using a more general potential that is not restricted to the X(5) critical point. These results, in parallel to more extensive IBM-1 calculations, will eventually be compared to the experimental results to more accurately locate ¹³⁸Gd along the U(5) − SU(3) arm of the structure triangle.

The half-life of the I^π = 4⁻ intruder state at 2305 keV in ³⁴₁₅P₁₉ has been measured using γ-ray coincident fast timing with LaBr₃:Ce scintillation detectors. Excited states in ³⁴P were populated in the ¹⁸O(¹⁸O,pn)³⁴P reaction at a beam energy of 36 MeV at the Tandem Laboratory at the National Institute of Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest, Romania. A half-life of t_1/2 ~ 2 ns was obtained for the 4⁻ state, giving an M2 reduced transition probability consistent with similar transitions in this mass region and confirming the intruder-parity nature of the state.

An experiment was performed at the 88-inch cyclotron at LBNL to investigate the structure of uranium isotopes and concurrently test the so-called surrogate ratio method. A 28 MeV proton beam was used to bombard ²³⁶U and ²³⁸U targets and the outgoing light ions were detected using the STARS silicon telescope allowing isotopic assignments and the excitation energy of the compound nucleus to be measured. A fission detector was placed at backward angles to give particle-fission coincidences, while the six clover germanium detectors of the LIBERACE array were used for particle-γ coincidences. The (p,d) reaction channels on ²³⁶U and ²³⁸U targets were used as a surrogate to measure the σ(²³⁴U(n,f))/σ(²³⁶U(n,f)) cross section ratio. The results give reasonable agreement with literature values over an equivalent neutron energy range between 0 MeV and 6 MeV. Structure results in ²³⁵U include a new (3/2⁻) level at 1035 keV, that is tentatively assigned as the 3/2⁻[501] Nilsson state. The analogue 3/2⁻[501] state in ²³⁷U may be associated with a previously observed level at 1201 keV, whose spin/parity is restricted to J^π = 3/2⁻ on the basis of newly observed decays to the ground band.

A new collective band with high dynamic moment of inertia in ¹⁵⁸Er at spins beyond band termination has been found in addition to the two previously reported ones. The measured transition quadrupole moments (Q_t) of these three bands are very similar. These three bands have been suggested to possess a triaxial strongly deformed shape, based on comparisons with calculations using the cranked Nilsson-Strutinsky model and with tilted axis cranking calculations using the Skyrme-Hartree-Fock model. In addition, three collective bands with similar high dynamic moments of inertia, tentatively assigned to ¹⁵⁷Ho, have been observed. Thus, it is suggested that all these structures share a common underlying character and that they are most likely associated with triaxial strongly deformed minima which are predicted to be close to the yrast line at spin 50 – 70ℏ.

Transition quadrupole moments, Q_t, of two ultrahigh-spin, collective structures in ¹⁵⁴Er have been measured for the first time using the Doppler Shift Attenuation Method (DSAM). Data were acquired at the ATLAS accelerator facility of Argonne National Laboratory, using the Gammasphere detector array. A thick, gold-backed ¹¹⁰Pd foil was bombarded by a beam of ⁴⁸Ti ions at 215 MeV. The Q_t for each band was determined from the Doppler shift of gamma rays emitted by the resulting recoil nuclei. The extracted transition quadrupole moments are significantly different in magnitude, suggesting the two structures in ¹⁵⁴Er represent distinct exotic nuclear shapes, namely axial superdeformed (SD) with Q_t ≈ 20 eb, and triaxial strongly deformed (TSD) with Q_t ≈ 11 eb. Indeed, the results calibrate the quadrupole moments of TSD bands recently measured in light erbium nuclei, ^157,158Er.

A hypothesis of the chiral symmetry breaking opened a new opportunity for the study of spontaneous time-reversal symmetry breaking in an atomic nucleus. The occurence of chirality has been found in ^126,128Cs nuclei for which specific electromagnetic selection rules have been found in Doppler Shift Attenuation experiments. Here, recent DSA measurements in the ¹²⁴Cs nucleus are presented. The ¹²⁴Cs nucleus was produced in the ¹¹⁴Cd(¹⁴N,4n)¹²⁴Cs reaction at Heavy Ion Laboratory of the University of Warsaw. The obtained results agree with basic expectations deduced from the chiral symmetry breaking. A connection between the chirality phenomenon and the time-reversal symmetry is discussed and a possibility of using chiral doublets for studies of fundamental time reversal symmetry is suggested.

Experiments were carried out at the Wright Nuclear Structure Laboratory at Yale University using the 21MV ESTU Tandem Van de Graaff accelerator with the purpose of studying ⁸⁸Y. A beam of ¹⁸O impinged at laboratory energies of 60, 65 and 70 MeV on a 600 μg/cm²⁷⁴Ge target with a thick (10mg/cm²) ¹⁹⁷Au backing. This experiment was performed with the specific aim of accessing medium spin states of the nucleus of interest. A second experiment was undertaken to populate the nucleus of interest in higher spin states by impinging the same ¹⁸O beam on a thin 62 μg/cm²⁷⁶Ge target with a 20 μg/cm² carbon backing at a laboratory beam energy of 90 MeV. Gamma rays emitted following the decay of excited states in ⁸⁸Y and other nuclei populated in the reactions were measured using the YRAST ball detector array, consisting of 10 Compton suppressed HPGe clover detectors. In conjunction with the experimental study presented here, nuclear shell model calculations using a truncated valence space have also been performed in an attempt to describe the single-particle make-up of the states observed. Preliminary results from these experiments and theoretical calculations are presented.

The triaxial, strongly deformed rotational bands in odd-odd nucleus ¹⁶⁴Lu are analyzed based on the "tops-on-top model", which is an extension of the "top-on-top model" to include two valence nucleons in each single-j orbital. It is demonstrated that energy levels of experimentally known TSD bands of positive and negative parities are well reproduced. The location of negative parity yrare band is predicted, and also B(E2) and B(M1) values for in-band and out-of-band transitions among the yrast and yrare TSD bands are estimated. It is confirmed that one unit difference in the "wobbling quantum number" corresponds to the same difference in the alignment of rotor angular momentum. Coriolis interaction is effective to fully align single-particle spins both in the yrast and yrare bands.

The CRIS (Collinear Resonant Ionisation Spectroscopy) beam line is a new experimental set up at the ISOLDE facility at CERN. CRIS is being constructed for high-resolution laser spectroscopy measurements on radioactive isotopes. These measurements can be used to extract nuclear properties of isotopes far from stability. The CRIS beam line has been under construction since 2009 and testing of its constituent parts have been performed using stable and radioactive ion beams, in preparation for its first on-line run. This paper will present the current status of the CRIS experiment and highlight results from the recent tests.

The installation of an ion–beam cooler–buncher at the ISOLDE, CERN facility has provided increased sensitivity for collinear laser spectroscopy experiments. A migration of single-particle states in gallium and in copper isotopes has been investigated through extensive measurements of ground state and isomeric state hyperfine structures. Lying beyond the N = 50 shell closure, ⁸²Ga is the most exotic nucleus in the region to have been studied by optical methods, and is reported here for the first time.

In-source laser spectroscopy has been performed at CERN-ISOLDE with the RILIS laser ion source on ^{191–204,206,208–211,216,218}Po. New information on the β decay of ¹⁹⁹Po were extracted in the process, challenging previous results. Large-scale atomic calculations were performed to extract the changes in the mean-square charge radius δ⟨r²⟩ from the isotope shifts. The δ⟨r²⟩ for the even-A isotopes reveal a large deviation from the spherical droplet model for N < 116.

A Coulomb excitation experiment in inverse kinematics has been carried out at the REX-ISOLDE facility in order to study the properties of low-lying excited states in ¹⁰⁷Sn. The measured γ ray spectrum has been compared with predicted γ ray spectra from a combined shell-model and GOSIA analysis. In this approach, a set of matrix elements, generated within the shell-model framework, based on a realistic nucleon-nucleon interaction and a set of single-particle energies relative to ¹⁰⁰Sn, is used as input. Comparison between the calculated and predicted spectra can be used to help identify the placement of the single-neutron states in ¹⁰¹Sn. In particular, the results can potentially provide clues on the ordering of the two lowest-lying orbits; the g_7/2 and d_5/2 states.

Evidence has been obtained for the existence of the long predicted 16⁺ spin-gap isomer in ⁹⁶Cd. The decay of the isomer was identified and studied following the use of an 850 MeV/u beam of ¹²⁴Xe impinging on a Be target and the fragment recoil separator at the GSI Laboratory. Gamma decays from the fragments were detected using the RISING gamma ray array, in its stopped beam configuration, plus a silicon active stopper. The data obtained have been compared with shell model predictions, which indicate that the isoscalar neutron-proton interaction plays a key role in the formation of the isomer.

A Differential Plunger device for measuring the lifetimes of Unbound Nuclear States (DPUNS) is currently being built at the University of Manchester. The plunger has been designed to be able to work with the proton-, alpha-, beta- and isomer-tagging methods using the JUROGAM II - RITU - GREAT setup at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. Valuable nuclear-structure information can be investigated from the measurement of lifetimes in proton-and alpha-unbound nuclei. To date, nuclear structure information from proton emission has been obtained from a comparison of the experimentally measured half-life with that predicted from various tunnelling calculations. A crucial parameter required to perform these calculations is the deformation of the parent nucleus involved in the decay, which in all cases to date, has only ever been estimated or calculated from theory. DPUNS aims to address this logical weakness through the measurement of the lifetimes of excited states in these unbound nuclei. The first measurement of a lifetime in a proton-unbound nucleus was recently obtained for ¹⁰⁹I. The results from this measurement were discussed along with the future physics programme that can be performed with DPUNS.

The observation of a nuclear clustering effect and the stability of parameters of nucleon interactions permit a conclusion about the presence of the tuning effect in nuclear data similar to that in particle masses where integer relations between electromagnetic mass differences of leptons (SM parameters) and masses of nucleons, pions and other particles are found.

A study of the ¹⁰Be(⁴He,⁴He)¹⁰Be reaction has been performed at ¹⁰Be beam energies of 25.0, 27.0, 29.0, 32.0, 34.0, 38.0, 40.0, 42.0, 44.0 and 46.0 MeV. The measurements were to explore possible molecular rotational bands in ¹⁴C. Three states at excitation energies of E_x = 18.8, 19.76 and 20.66 MeV have been measured and their spins have been determined to be 5⁻, 5⁻ and 6⁺, respectively.

The reaction ¹²₆C(⁶₃Li, d)¹⁶₈O* at a ⁶Li bombarding energy of 42 MeV has been used to populate excited states in ¹⁶O. The deuteron ejectiles were measured using the high-resolution Munich Q3D spectrograph. A large-acceptance silicon-strip detector array was used to register the recoil and break-up products. This complete kinematic set-up has enabled absolute α-decay widths to be measured with high-resolution in the 13.9 to 15.9 MeV excitation energy regime in ¹⁶O; many for the first time. This energy region spans the 14.4 MeV four-α breakup threshold. Monte-Carlo simulations of the detector geometry and break-up processes yield detection efficiencies for the two dominant decay modes of 40% and 37% for the α+¹²C(g.s.) and a+¹²C(2⁺₁) break-up channels respectively.

The¹²C(⁴He,⁸Be)⁸Be reaction has been measured with a beam energy ranging from 12.2 to 20.0 MeV. The α-particles emitted in the decay of ⁸Be were detected in an array of four double sided silicon strip detectors. The excitation function for events in which the ⁸Be centre of mass angle θ_cm = 90° provides evidence that the previously observed 6⁺ resonance at an excitation energy of 19.35 MeV in ¹⁶O is a 6⁺ doublet, with members at ~ 19.30 and 19.37 MeV.

The generalized two-center cluster model (GTCM), which can handle various single particle configurations in general two center systems, is applied to the light neutron-rich system, ¹²Be = α + α + 4N. We discuss the change of the neutrons' configuration around two a-cores as a variation of an excitation energy. The covalent, ionic and atomic configurations coexists with the degenerate feature above the α+⁸Heg.s. particle-decay threshold. We find the strong enhancement in the monopole excitation from the ground state to the excited states. The GTCM calculation is also applied to even Be isotopes, and the systematics on the structural changes from bound region to continuum is discussed.

The shell and cluster structure of the atomic nucleus, as well as their interrelation (the SU(3) connection) is discussed. Some recent results indicating the importance of the shell-like clusterization are reviewed. Special attention is paid to the aspects of symmetries and phases. The important role of the SU(3) connection in the no-core shell model studies is mentioned.

Neutron-rich Co isotopes from N = 34 to 40 were studied through multinucleon transfer by bombarding a ²³⁸U target with a 460 MeV ⁷⁰Zn beam at LNL. Gamma-recoil coincidences were recorded identifying the ions by a high-acceptance magnetic spectrometer (PRISMA) and detecting the gamma radiation by an array of HPGe clover detectors (CLARA). The results are discussed in comparison with the predictions of large-scale shell-model calculations.

The neutron-rich nuclei ¹⁰⁹Nb and ¹⁰⁹Zr have been populated using in-flight fission of a ²³⁸U beam at 345 MeV/nucleon at the RIBF facility. A T_1/2 = 150(30) ns isomer at 313 keV has been identified in ¹⁰⁹Nb for the first time. The low-lying levels in ¹⁰⁹Nb have been also populated following the β-decay of ¹⁰⁹Zr. Based on the difference in feeding pattern between the isomeric and β decays, the decay scheme from the isomeric state in ¹⁰⁹Nb was established. The observed hindrances of the electromagnetic transitions deexciting the isomeric state are discussed in terms of possible shape coexistence. Potential energy surface calculations for single-proton configurations predict the presence of low-lying oblate-deformed states in ¹⁰⁹Nb.

The neutron-rich nucleus ¹¹⁰Mo has been investigated by means of γ-ray spectroscopy following the β-decay of ¹¹⁰Nb, produced using in-flight fission of a ²³⁸U beam at 345 MeV/nucleon at the RIBF facility. In addition to the ground-band members reported previously, spectroscopic information on the low-lying levels of the quasi-γ band built on the second 2⁺ state at 494 keV has been obtained for the first time. The experimental finding of the second 2⁺ state being lower than the yrast 4⁺ level suggests that axially-asymmetric γ softness is substantially enhanced in this nucleus. The experimental results are compared with model calculations based on the general Bohr Hamiltonian method. The systematics of the low-lying levels in even-even A ≈ 110 nuclei is discussed in comparison with that in the neutron-rich A ≈ 190 region, by introducing the quantity Es/E(2⁺₁), Es = E(2⁺₂) − E(4⁺₁) as a global signature of the structural evolution involving axial asymmetry.

The first measurement of the elastic scattering of the halo nucleus ¹¹Li and its core ⁹Li on ²⁰⁸Pb at energies around the Coulomb barrier is presented. The ¹¹Li reaction showed a large cross section for the breakup channel, even at energies well below the barrier. The analysis of the ¹¹Li + ²⁰⁸Pb scattering data in terms of the continuum-discretized coupled-channel calculations indicates that the effect of the coupling to the breakup channels produces a strong suppression of the elastic cross section at energies above and below the barrier. This effect is mainly due to the strong Coulomb coupling to the dipole states in the low-lying continuum of ¹¹Li.

The perceptive analysis of Rutherford, celebrated at this conference, turned the experiments of Geiger and Marsden into a measurement of the radius of the object that became known as the atomic "nucleus". We now know that the nucleus can have a range of radii that depend on its static and dynamical deformations. These deformations give rise to the distributions of reaction barriers that have been extensively studied over recent years. While fusion reactions are most often used for such studies, there are cases where, for physical or practical reasons, the scattering channels must be exploited. Despite the major advantages gained from modern experimental techniques, the resulting experiments are in spirit essentially the same as those performed over 100 years ago by Rutherford and his colleagues.

Elastic scattering is often dismissed as trivial to measure and uninteresting to analyse. In fact, it is neither, as this contribution hopes to show. Provided care is taken to make precise measurements and the target carefully selected the nuclear structure of the projectile can - and does in a profound way in many cases - influence the near-barrier elastic scattering through strong channel-coupling effects.

At the Laboratori Nazionali del Sud (LNS) in Catania (Italy), light radioactive ion beams have been produced through the In Flight Fragmentation method, using ¹⁸O and ¹³C at 55 MeV/A as primary beams impinging on a ⁹Be production target. Elastic scattering angular distributions of ¹⁶C+p and ¹⁶C+d at 50 MeV/A, ¹⁰Be+p at 56 MeV/A and ¹³B+d at 52 MeV/A systems were measured by using the CHIMERA (Charge Heavy Ion Mass and Energy Resolving Array) multidetector and kinematical coincidence technique. The experimental data are fitted by using the optical model.

In 1940 Kramers demonstrated theoretically the influence of dissipation on the rate of the thermal escape of a Brownian particle from metastable state. He pointed out the nuclear fission process as a possible application of his results. In his derivation only the canonical ensemble and harmonical shapes of the potential were considered. We generalize the Kramers results for the case of the microcanonical ensemble which is more relevant for the fission process and derive the corrections to the original Kramers formulas accounting for the anharmonic character of the collective potential near its quasistationary and barrier points. The finite "distance" between the barrier and scission points is accounted for as well. We perform quantitative study of the agreement between the generalized and corrected Kramers fission rates and the exact dynamical quasistationary rates in the case of typical fission potentials.

To produce a radioactive-isotope (RI) beam with high spin alignment, we have developed a novel method, the two-step projectile-fragmentation (PF) method, that employs momentum-dispersion matching. An on-line experiment to produce ³²A1 from ⁴⁸Ca via ³³A1 was performed at RIKEN RI Beam Factory. In the experiment, we succeeded in producing approximately 8% spin alignment in an RI beam of ³²A1. In this paper, we focus on evaluating the magnitude of spin alignment realized in one-nucleon removal from ³³A1.

The yield of projectile like fragments (PLFs) has been measured in the reactions of ^16,18O with ¹⁶⁴Dy and ²⁰⁸Pb targets at energies above the Coulomb barrier. The experimental data are analyzed to ascertain the role of projectile structure on the multi-nucleon and cluster correlations in transfer reactions. The variation of transfer probability with the number of nucleons transferred from the projectile to the target nucleus at the grazing angle has been investigated for both the systems. In the case of ¹⁸O induced reactions the cross sections of the two neutron (2n) stripping as well as the 2n- correlated cluster transfer are strongly enhanced as compared to the ¹⁶O induced reactions. These results have been discussed on the basis of the possible influence of the valence di-neutrons in the ¹⁸O nucleus on multi-particle transfer reactions.

The complex G-matrix folding model predicts that the real part of the potential becomes repulsive for high-energy heavy-ion systems. We investigate the energy evolution of the potential and discuss a possible method for giving evidence for the repulsive nature of heavy-ion optical potentials. We propose to measure the characteristic evolution of the diffraction pattern in differential cross sections, for the first time, to find clear evidence of the repulsive optical potential for heavy-ion systems.

Semi-central events of collisions ^40,48Ca +^40,48Ca at 25 MeV/nucleon have been investigated by means of the Chimera multi-detector array. We find that the competition between evaporation residue and two or more fragment emission is regulated in a strong way by the neutron to proton ratio of the total reaction system. Comparisons of experimental data and Constrained Molecular Dynamics model calculations allow to obtain information about the behavior of the symmetry energy of the nuclear Equation of State.

A study of the ¹⁴C and ¹⁵C states was pursued at the Catania INFN-LNS laboratory by the ¹²C(¹⁸O,¹⁶O)¹⁴C and ¹³C(¹⁸O,¹⁶O)¹⁵C reactions at 84 MeV incident energy. The ¹⁶O ejectiles were detected at forward angles by the MAGNEX magnetic spectrometer. Exploiting the large momentum acceptance (20%) and solid angle (50 msr) of the spectrometer, energy spectra were obtained with a relevant yield up to 20 MeV excitation energy. The application of the powerful trajectory reconstruction technique did allow to get energy spectra and angular distributions with resolution of about 160 keV and 0.3°. In the energy spectra several known low lying states of ¹⁴C and ¹⁵C have been observed and some unknown resonant structures at about 10.5 and 13.6 MeV in ¹⁵C and 16 MeV in ¹⁴C appear.

The helical orbit spectrometer, HELIOS, at Argonne National Laboratory has been developed to measure transfer reactions in inverse kinematics with good Q-value resolution. The technique is discussed alongside examples of measurements with medium-mass beams, the first exploration of reactions in the the forward hemisphere, and a future outlook.

High resolution experimental data has been obtained for the ^40,42,44,48Ca(³He,t)Sc charge exchange reaction at 420 MeV beam energy, which favors the spin-isospin excitations. The measured angular distributions were analyzed for each state separately, and the relative spin dipole strength has been extracted for the first time. The low-lying spin-dipole strength distribution in ⁴⁰Sc shows some interesting periodic gross feature. It resembles to a soft, damped multi-phonon vibrational band with ℏω= 1.8 MeV, which might be associated to pairing vibrations around ⁴⁰Ca.

Nucleon transfer experiments have in recent years begun to be exploited in the study of nuclei far from stability, using radioactive beams in inverse kinematics. New techniques are still being developed in order to perform these experiments. The present experiment is designed to study the odd-odd nucleus ²⁶Na which has a high density of states and therefore requires gamma-ray detection to distinguish between them. The experiment employed an intense beam of up to 3×10⁷ pps of ²⁵Na at 5.0 MeV/nucleon from the ISAC-II facility at triumf. The new silicon array SHARC was used for the first time and was coupled to the segmented clover gamma-ray array TIGRESS. A novel thin plastic scintillator detector was employed at zero degrees to identify and reject reactions occurring on the carbon component of the (CD)₂ target. The efficiency of the background rejection using this detector is described with respect to the proton and gamma-ray spectra from the (d,p) reaction.

The distribution of neutron-hole strength has been studied in the N = 81 isotones ¹³⁷Ba, ¹³⁹Ce, ¹⁴¹Nd and ¹⁴³Sm through the single-neutron removing reactions (p,d) and (³He,α), at energies of 23 and 34 MeV, respectively. Systematic cross section measurements were made at angles sensitive to the transferred angular momentum, and spectroscopic factors extracted through a distorted-wave Born approximation analysis. Application of the MacFarlane-French sum rules indicate an anomalously low summed g_7/2 spectroscopic factor, most likely due to extensive fragmentation of the single-particle strength. Single-particle energies, based upon the centroids of observed strength, are presented.

A study of low-lying excited states in Z = 51 isotopes has been performed using single-proton adding reactions, (α,t) and (³He,d), on the series of stable, even mass Z = 50 isotopes. Our goal was to build upon results from a previous (α,t) study [1] by examining the fragmentation of high-j (g_7/2 and h_11/2) single-proton strengths utilising greater statistics. Data from the (³He,d) measurements provide further information regarding the low-j orbitals within this nuclear shell. Preliminary findings from the analysis are presented in this report.

The energies of the g_7/2 and h_11/2 neutron orbitals in N = 51 isotones have been investigated. The single-neutron adding reactions (d,p) and (α, ³He) have been performed on ⁸⁸Sr, ⁹⁰Zr and ⁹²Mo targets, at beam energies of 15 MeV and 50 MeV, respectively. These measurements were supplemented by studying the d(⁸⁶Kr,p)⁸⁷ Kr reaction at an energy of 10 MeV/u, in inverse kinematics. Absolute cross sections were measured, ℓ assignments made and spectroscopic factors extracted. The energy centroids of the single-particle strength have been deduced and the observed trends are discussed.

Quasi elastic cross sections were measured for the first time for both negative and positive missing momenta for the ²⁰⁹Bi(e,e'p)²⁰⁸Pb reaction leading to the ground state and hole states of ²⁰⁸Pb. Experimental cross sections obtained between -0.3 GeV/c to 0.3 GeV/c agree with theoretical calculations using RDWIA techniques both in shape and magnitude for the ground state. The data for the ground state production of ²⁰⁸Pb are consistent with a theoretical model assuming a single proton(1.06 ± 0.10) in the 1h9/2 orbit in ²⁰⁹Bi.

We present a density functional theory which connects nuclear matter equation of state, which incorporates clustering at low densities, with clustering in medium and heavy nuclei at the nuclear surface. This explains the large values of symmetry energy reported by Natowitz et al for densities < 0.01 fm⁻³ in addition to the binding energies and charge rms radii of 367 spherical nuclei. The present theory which is partly macroscopic competes with other high quality microscopic-macroscopic approaches. Merits of the results with clustering and no-clustering are discussed. We also make connection with realistic interactions (AV18+UIX/IL2) which have been used in ab initio calculations in s- and p-shell nuclei and neutron matter. Theory predicts new situations and regimes to be explored both theoretically and experimentally. It is demonstrated that, due to clustering, the neutron skin thickness reduces significantly.

We have developed a new method for determining microscopically the five-dimensional quadrupole collective Hamiltonian, on the basis of the adiabatic self-consistent collective coordinate method. This method consists of the constrained Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (HFB) equation and the local QRPA (LQRPA) equations, which are an extension of the usual QRPA (quasiparticle random phase approximation) to non-HFB-equilibrium points, on top of the CHFB states. One of the advantages of our method is that the inertial functions calculated with this method contain the contributions of the time-odd components of the mean field, which are ignored in the widely-used cranking formula. We illustrate usefulness of our method by applying to oblate-prolate shape coexistence in ⁷²Kr and shape phase transition in neutron-rich Cr isotopes around N = 40.

We carry out a systematic investigation on the low-energy electric dipole strength, which is often called pygmy dipole resonances (PDR), using the canonical-basis time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov (Cb-TDHFB) method. The Cb-TDHFB is a new method which is derived from TDHFB with an approximation analogous to the BCS theory that the pair potential is assumed to be diagonal in the time-dependent canonical basis. We apply the method to linear-response calculation for even-even nuclei. We report the neutron-number dependence of PDR in light (A < 70) and heavy isotopes (A > 100) around N = 82.

The role of the tensor terms in the Skyrme interaction is studied for their effect in dynamic calculations where non-zero contributions to the mean-field may arise, even when the starting nucleus, or nuclei are even-even and have no active time-odd potentials in the ground state. We study collisions in the test-bed ¹⁶O-¹⁶O system, and give a qualitative analysis of the behaviour of the time-odd tensor-kinetic density, which only appears in the mean field Hamiltonian in the presence of the tensor force. We find an axial excitation of this density is induced by a collision.

Shell model calculations reveal that the ground and low-lying yrast states of the N = Z nuclei ⁹²₄₆Pd and ⁹⁶₄₈Cd are mainly built upon isoscalar spin-aligned neutron-proton pairs each carrying the maximum angular momentum J = 9 allowed by the shell 0g_9/2 which is dominant in this nuclear region. This mode of excitation is unique in nuclei and indicates that the spin-aligned pair has to be considered as an essential building block in nuclear structure calculations. In this contribution we will discuss this neutron-proton pair coupling scheme in detail. It may help in understanding the intrinsic structure of the shell-model wave function. In particular, we will explore the competition between the normal monopole pair coupling and the spin-aligned coupling schemes.

A systematic study of proton-neutron pairing in 1f − 2p shell nuclei is reported, based on a model that includes deformation, spin-orbit effects and isoscalar and isovector pairing. Selected results are presented for ⁴⁴Ti, ⁴⁶V and ⁴⁸Cr.

Nucleon knockout reactions from fast radioactive secondary beams colliding with light nuclear targets provide a useful tool for studying structure away from the valley of (β-stability. An efficient means of producing specific exotic nuclei, the technique has been recently applied to study nuclear halos, isospin symmetry and cross-shell excitations, and in tracking the evolution of single-particle states, and probing the associated quenching (N=20, N=28) and emergence (N=16) of shell gaps. Recent theoretical work has demonstrated the sensitivity of residue momentum distributions following two-nucleon removal to the underlying structure. In particular, there is a sensitivity to the total orbital angular momentum of the removed pair, providing additional tests of (shell- or many-body-) structure-model two-nucleon overlaps. We illustrate the structural sensitivities in the context of nucleon knockout from ¹²C and ¹⁶O, and discuss the prospects for studying np-correlations along the N = Z line, highlighting the need for new final-state exclusive measurements, including those with stable beams.

There are now several well-studied instances where very neutron-rich light nuclei at or near the neutron drip-line, such as ⁶He, ¹¹Li and ¹⁴Be, have been found to have a Borromean three-body structure. Such systems are modelled effectively as a well-bound core nucleus plus two weakly-bound valence neutrons, where none of the two-body subsystems forms a bound state. It is now known that the heaviest particle-bound carbon isotope, ²²C, shares these properties. We discuss a development of four-body reaction model calculations, using the fast adiabatic approximation, that is particularly well-suited for a quantitative analysis of reactions of such neutron-rich nuclei with a target nucleus at beam energies of order 100-300 MeV per nucleon; energies available at new and future radioactive ion beam (RIB) facilities. The ²²C projectile wave function is calculated using the ²⁰C core plus two-valence neutron three-body description.

The discrepancies between theoretical predictions and experimental data for nucleon-deuteron scattering at high momentum transfers are usually attributed to the three-nucleon force effects but inclusion of 3N forces (of conventional type) in exact Faddeev calculations helps to improve the agreement with the data only partially. Alternatively, the short-range part of 2N interaction (manifesting itself in processes with large transferred momenta) may be modified by incorporating quark degrees of freedom. Such a microscopic NN-force model - the dressed bag model - was proposed by the Moscow-Tuebingen group and is based on the production of an intermediate 6q bag dressed by a strong σ field. It is demonstrated that taking into account the formation of an intermediate 6q bag leads to a noticeable enhancement of the deuteron wave function in the high-momentum region. Our preliminary calculations performed within the dressed bag model show that the suggested mechanism of the short-range NN interaction gives significant contribution to the nucleon-deuteron scattering at high momentum transfers both through 2N and 3N forces.

An extended Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (EBHF) theory is constructed for the description of nuclear structure in order to use a bare interaction among constituent particles. The nuclear interaction is characterized by the strong tensor force induced by pion exchange interaction. To handle the strong tensor force based on the single-particle picture, the Hartree-Fock variational model space is extended to include 2-particle 2-hole (2p-2h) states with all possible configurations, which are able to describe high momentum components originating from pseudo-scalar nature of the pion. We take a variational principle of the total energy in this extended model space. We obtain an equation for single-particle states in the Fermi sea with inclusion of the effect of the pion exchange and short-range repulsive interaction. We elucidate the nature of the EBHF theory by comparing with the Brueckner-Hartree-Fock (BHF) theory and the Feshbach projection operator method. The EBHF theory has a similar structure as the BHF theory except for the inclusion of the concept of the energy of the total system. The Feshbach projection operator method completely agrees with our framework when the P-space projection corresponds to the Hartree-Fock state and the Q-space projection corresponds to 2p-2h states with all possible configurations.

Investigations of important characteristics of the structure of nuclei near drip-lines in coordinate and momentum space have been performed. The charge form factors, charge and matter densities and the corresponding rms radii for even-even isotopes of Ni, Kr, and Sn are calculated in the framework of deformed self-consistent mean field Skyrme DDHF+BCS method. The resulting charge radii and neutron skin thicknesses of these nuclei are compared with available experimental data, as well as with other theoretical predictions. The formation of a neutron skin is analyzed in terms of various definitions. Its correlation with the nuclear symmetry energy is studied within the coherent density fluctuation model using the symmetry energy as a function of density within the Brueckner energy-density functional. The nucleon momentum distributions for the same isotopic chains of neutron-rich nuclei are studied in the framework of the same mean-field method, as well as of theoretical correlation methods based on light-front dynamics and local density approximation. The isotopic sensitivities of the calculated neutron and proton momentum distributions are investigated together with the effects of nucleon correlations and deformation of nuclei.

We present results for levels in ³⁰S (the mirror of nucleus ³⁰S) that are used in rp reaction rate calculations. As the properties of only a few levels in ³⁰S are known, most are determined from the Isobaric Mass Multiplet Equation and the binding energies of the T=1 analog states. Where the analog states are not known the levels are calculated with the sd-shell interactions USDA and USDB. The gamma-decay lifetimes and ²⁹P to ³⁰S spectroscopic factors are also calculated from USDA and USDB, and together with experimental information on the levels of excited states are used to determine the ²⁹P(p,γ)³⁰S reaction rates. Some new results on the ³⁵Ar(p,γ)³⁶K reaction are also presented.

Isotopic abundance ratios of ³⁰Si/²⁸Si found in presolar SiC grains of suspected nova origin agree qualitatively with proposed oxygen-neon (ONe) nova composition but fail to agree quantitatively with ejecta predictions made by hydrodynamic ONe nova models. The Astrophysical ³⁰P(p,γ)³¹S reaction rate is a key quantity used in nova models that predict isotopic abundances produced during nucleosynthesis leading up to the outburst. Currently, there is a large uncertainty in the rate at nova temperatures (0.1 < T < 0.4 GK) causing the predicted ³⁰Si abundance ratio to vary by a factor of 4. The ³⁰P(p,γ)³¹S reaction rate can be determined indirectly by measuring triton momenta from ³²S(d,t)³¹S reactions. ³¹S Resonant states measured up to 600 keV above the proton threshold of 6131 keV and within the Gamow window which contribute most significantly to the rate can then be used to re-evaluate the rate for nova temperatures and reduce the uncertainty.

In this work the astrophysical ²⁶Si(p,γ)²⁷P reaction is studied using the Coulomb dissociation technique. We performed a ²⁷P Coulomb Dissociation experiment at GSI, Darmstadt (28 May-5 June 2007) using the ALADIN-LAND setup which allows complete-kinematic studies. A secondary ²⁷P beam at 498 AMeV impinging a 515mg/cm² Pb target was used. The relative energy of the outgoing system (²⁶Si+p) is measured obtaining the resonant states of the ²⁷P. Preliminary results show four resonant states measured at 0.36±0.07, 0.88±0.09, 1.5±0.2, 2.3±0.3 MeV and evidence of a higher state at around 3.1 MeV. The preliminary total cross section obtained for relative energies between 0 and 3 MeV has been measured and yields 55±7 mb.

One of the first nuclear reactions measured after the invention of the accelerator by Cockroft and Walton was ¹¹B+p, measured by Rutherford and Oliphant in 1933 [1, 2]. This reaction, however, is not yet fully understood at low incident proton energies [3], and the present paper therefore presents a new measurement with complete-kinematics data utilising modern large-area segmented silicon-strip detectors. The aim of the measurement is twofold: firstly, to fully characterise the triple-α decay of the T=1, 2⁺ state at 16.11 MeV in ¹²C; secondly, to search for γ decay of the 2⁺ state to lower lying states, in particular the newly suggested 2⁺ state around 9–10 MeV [4]. The isovector M1 population of lower lying 2⁺ states is strongly favoured over isovector E2 transitions to 0⁺ states, and the method is therefore a promising method to elucidating this timely question.

Nuclear fragmentation reactions induced by alpha particle projectiles are an important component of the space radiation problem. Inclusive isotopic spectral distributions and double differential cross sections are used as input to the Boltzmann transport equation, which is often solved in many space radiation applications. For alpha particle projectiles, it is found that most of the available experimental data are below the pion threshold. This is a significant validation gap because the important energy range for galactic cosmic rays extends up to 10 GeV/n and above.

Nuclear weak processes are investigated based on new shell model Hamiltonians, which give successful description of spin responses in nuclei, and applied to astrophysical problems. Neutrino-induced reactions on ¹²C and synthesis of light elements by supernova neutrinos, and effects of contamination of ¹³C, whose natural isotopic abundance is 1.1%, on inclusive ν-¹²C reactions are discussed. Spin-dipole transitions and ν-induced reactions on ¹⁶O are studied by using a new Hamiltonian with proper tensor components, and compared with conventional calculations and previous CRPA results. Gamow-Teller transition strength in ⁴⁰Ar and ν-induced reactions on ⁴⁰Ar by solar neutrinos are studied based on monopole-based-universal interaction (VMU). We finally discuss electron capture reactions on Ni isotopes in stellar environments.

Electron capture on neutron-rich medium-mass nuclei is a key process where the electrons that impede the collapse of the core of massive stars are captured, thereby producing very neutron-rich nuclei. As the core collapses, the supernova is then initiated. For the electron capture to proceed, however, the allowed Gamow-Teller (GT) transition must be unblocked either by thermal excitations or by mixing of proton configurations from a higher-lying shell into the ground-state configuration of the nucleus. The present paper presents an experiment performed at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory at Michigan State University, in which we study the configuration mixing in the neutron-rich⁷⁶Zn isotope. The experiment utilised single-proton and single-neutron knockout with detection of reaction-residue γ rays and measurement of the parallel momentum of the residue. Through this we investigate the proton components of the ⁷⁶Zn ground state, with a particular interest in π-g_9/2, which may unblock the GT electron capture even at low temperatures and thereby open a new pathway for the initiation of the collapse of the pre-supernova stellar core.

Superbursts are long, energetic, rare explosions, probably triggered by the ¹²C+¹²C burning in the crust of neutron stars. However, with the current adopted 12C+12C fusion reaction rate, it is impossible for the current model to explain observations. Therefore, a strong resonance at E_c.m.=1.5 MeV has been proposed to enhance the carbon fusion reaction rate. By comparing the cross sections of the three carbon isotope fusion reactions, ¹²C+¹²C, ¹²C+¹³C and ¹³C+¹³C, we have established an upper limit for the ¹²C+¹²C fusion reaction rate. Our preliminary results show that the proposed strong resonance might not be realistic. The superburst puzzle is still unsolved.

The elements between iron and strontium are largely produced by the weak s-process occurring in massive stars during the late stages of convective core He burning and the convective shell carbon burning with the primary source of neutrons coming from the reaction ²²Ne(α,n)²⁵Mg. However, shell carbon burning may produce hot enough temperatures to activate ¹²C(¹²C,n)²³Mg as a significant neutron source. Few studies have been done on this reaction, and the extrapolation from experimental data down to the relevant astrophysical energies is uncertain. Recent studies performed at the Nuclear Science Laboratory of Notre Dame aim to improve the existing reaction data using new experimental techniques as well as provide a more reliable extrapolation to the low energies not accessible by experiment. Preliminary results will be presented and the astrophysical implications will be discussed.

An ongoing investigation into the angular momentum generated during the fission of ²⁵²Cf is currently under way using the SpecTrometer for Exotic Fission Fragments (STEFF). Measurements have been made of the fold distribution (measured multiplicity) with STEFF. These have been compared to a Monte-carlo simulation to determine a value for the average angular momentum J_rms = 6ℏ which is comparable to previous measurements [1]. Measurements of the gamma-ray multiplicity were performed whilst gating on different fragment mass regions. The result was compared with a sum of the lowest 2⁺ energies from both fragment and complementary in the mass gate. The results support the view that gamma-ray multiplicity is largely determined by the decay of the nucleus through near yrast transitions that follow the statistical decay.

A new plunger device has been designed and is being built at the University of Manchester to measure lifetimes of unbound states in exotic nuclei approaching the proton drip-line. The device is designed to work in both vacuum and gas environments and will be used in conjunction with the gas filled separator RITU and the vacuum-mode separator MARA at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. This will enable the accurate measurement of excited state lifetimes identified via isomer and charged-particle tagging. The plunger will be used to address many key facets of nuclear structure physics with particular emphasis on the effect of deformation on proton emission rates.

The development of a new fragment separator (Super-FRS) at the future Facility for Anti-proton and Ion Research (FAIR) will allow the study of proton- and neutron-rich short-lived nuclei. As one of the nine proposed set-ups established under the NuSTAR international collaboration, the DESPEC group plan to develop a new fast-timing array to be located at the focal point of the separator, which will use LaBr₃(Ce) scintillators to measure the half-lives of excited states in these exotic nuclei. In order to optimise the efficiency of the array while maintaining the intrinsically good timing properties of the detectors, Monte-Carlo simulations will be carried out for 1, 1.5 and 2" cylindrical and 1×1.5×1.5" conical detectors. These simulations will inform the final design of the array based on the criteria of efficiency as a function of γ-ray energy, and timing performance. The simulations will be validated by comparing them with the results of an experiment at Bucharest, where sub-nanosecond lifetime measurements were successfully performed for excited states in ¹³⁸Ce. The results of the simulations will dictate the final design, and how it will be used in future experimental conditions.

High precision data for vector and tensor analyzing powers of the ¹H(,pp)n breakup reaction at 130 and 100 MeV deuteron beam energies have been measured in a large fraction of the phase space. They are compared to the theoretical predictions based on various approaches to describe the three nucleon (3N) system dynamics. Theoretical predictions describe very well the vector analyzing power data, with no need to include any three-nucleon force effects for these observables. Tensor analyzing powers can be also very well reproduced by calculations in most of the studied region, but locally certain discrepancies are observed. At 130 MeV for A_xy such discrepancies usually appear, or are enhanced, when model 3N forces are included. Predicted effects of 3NFs are much lower at 100 MeV and at this energy equally good consistency between the data and the calculations is obtained with or without 3NFs.

The isomeric structure of the neutron deficient nucleus ¹³²Pr, located in the rare-earth region of the nuclear chart, has been studied with the ⁹⁸Mo(⁴⁰Ar,5pn)¹³²Pr reaction at beam energies of 150, 158 and 165 MeV. The experiment was performed at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland where the ⁴⁰Ar beam was accelerated onto the target by the K130 cyclotron. The JUROGAM II HPGe detector array was employed in conjunction with the RITU gas-filled recoil separator. The focal-plane chamber housed a multi wire proportional counter and a position-sensitive silicon strip detector used for the implantation and identification of recoiling nuclei. The recoil-isomer tagging technique was used to correlate the delayed decays, measured in the Planar and Clover detectors of the GREAT spectrometer, with the known prompt transitions in ¹³²Pr. Two new delayed transitions have been observed at energies of 102 and 118 keV. The corresponding X ray peaks are consistent with Pr K_α and K_β X rays with energies of 35.63 and 40.91 keV, respectively. The half-life of the newly established isomeric state, from which the 102 and 118-keV transitions proceed, has been measured to be 2.5(3) μs.

In 1961 the Rutherford Jubilee Conference was held in Manchester to celebrate Rutherford's 1911 discovery of the atomic nucleus. In this paper I will give a brief history of the background to the 1961 meeting, summarise the media coverage of it and then take this opportunity to review the discovery from the perspective of 2011.

A new collinear resonant ionization spectroscopy (CRIS) beam line has recently been installed at ISOLDE, CERN utilising lasers to combine collinear laser spectroscopy and resonant ionization spectroscopy. The combined technique offers the ability to purify an ion beam that is heavily contaminated with radioactive isobars, including the ground state of an isotope from its isomer, allowing sensitive secondary experiments to be performed. A new programme aiming to use the CRIS technique for the separation of nuclear isomeric states for decay spectroscopy will commence in 2011. A decay spectroscopy station, consisting of a rotating wheel implantation system for alpha decay spectroscopy, and three high purity germanium detectors around the implantation site for gamma-ray detection, has been developed for this purpose. This paper will report the current status of the laser assisted decay spectroscopy set-up for the CRIS beam line.

We have developed a special computing code for calculation of nuclear quadrupole moments versus deformation parameter δ The calculated results for some heavy nuclei are compared with the 2001 experimental data From Nilsson level diagrams we found new level energies for each nucleus by using new δ parameter, which would be useful for other studies that use Nilsson model and its diagrams For Some Isotopes, it has been seen that by increasing neutron number, deformation parameter also increase, which means more deformation from spherical shape.

The nuclear burning process proceeds from the conservation of the most abundant element hydrogen to helium, then from helium to carbon and oxygen, and then from these to heavier elements. Some of the key reactions for the carbon and oxygen burning stages of the nucleosynthesis are ¹²C+¹²C and ¹⁶O+¹⁶O leading to all possible final states. This paper contains the experimental measurements of ¹²C+¹²C and ¹⁶O+¹⁶O angular distributions performed at the cyclotron DC-60 in Astana, Kazakhstan. The extracted beam of ¹⁶O and ¹²C was accelerated up to two energies 1.75 and 1.5 MeV/n and then directed to an Al₂O₃ target of thickness 20 μg/cm² and a carbon self-supporting target of thickness 17.4 μg/cm². The angular distribution calculations were performed using both the phenomenological optical potential (SPI-GENOA) code and the double folding potential (FRESCO) code.

A generalization of the Geiger-Nuttall law is deduced, which is valid for the radioactivity of all clusters (including α particles), by considering the clusterization and subsequent decay of nucleons within the nucleus. This universal decay law (UDL) is a linear relation between the half-lives of the decaying clusters and the corresponding Q-values. In this universal decay law (UDL) the penetrability is still a dominant quantity. By using three free parameters only, one finds that all known ground state to ground state radioactive decays are explained rather well. This allows us to search for new cluster decay modes and to carry out a simple and model-independent study of the decay properties of nuclei over the whole nuclear chart. It also helps in distinguishing the role played by pairing collectivity in the clustering process in heavy nuclei.

Dynamics of spectator matter break-up in non-central collisions of ¹⁹⁷Au+ ¹⁹⁷Au at 1000 MeV/A are explored within the framework of a quantum molecular dynamics (QMD) model. The phase space of nucleons bound in intermediate mass fragments are studied using two clustering subroutines. Backtracking the origin of fragments to the time of the initial contact between the colliding nuclei and applying the simulated annealing clusterization algorithm (SACA) indicates a significant yield of projectile-like and target-like fragments. The simplest clusterization approach based on the spatial correlation technique, however, predicted a much lesser production probability of fragments in the spectator zone.

Variation after projection (VAP) calculations in conjunction with Hartree-Bogoliubov (HB) ansatz have been carried out for N=60, 62 isotones in the mass region A=100. In this framework, the yrast spectra with J^Π ≥ 10⁺ B(E2) transition probabilities, quadrupole deformation parameter and occupation numbers for various shell model orbits have been obtained. The results of calculations indicate that the simultaneous increase in polarization of p_1/2, p_3/2 and f_5/2 proton sub-shells is a significant factor into the development of the deformation in neutron rich isotones in the mass region A=100.

In recent years, important developments in scintillator technology have been made in the Lanthanum Halogen LaBr3 (Ce) crystal, which has high-energy separation, very good timing-properties and a stopping-power that can be used as a detector at room temperature. The international PARIS project will be created as a prototype of this detector system, which will be used in SPIRAL2 as a stand alone or in collaboration with the EXOGAM or AGATA detector array. A fusion evaporation reaction is used to produce exotic nuclei and is then transferred at a very high angular momentum to compound nuclei. Due to the accompanying high rotation, the exotic shape starts changing into vibrational and rotational collective phenomena which hitherto have together become difficult to detect and fully understand. In order to perform this type of research, in addition to conventional known gamma-ray detectors, high-efficiency gamma-ray detectors that can effectively identify gamma rays are also required as calorimeters. LaBr3 is planned to use such means.

Results of ongoing analysis for energy and the time response of LaBr3 will be presented.

Parity violating electron scattering is studied systematically in the relativistic Eikonal approximation and the partial-wave analysis method. The parity violating asymmetries are calculated using the proton and neutron densities of nuclei as input, which are produced by the relativistic mean-field (RMF) theory. The behaviour of the parity violating asymmetries for Ca isotopes is analyzed. The results show that parity violating electron scattering is very sensitive to the difference between the proton and neutron density distributions. As an application, the parity violating asymmetries for some neutron-rich stable nuclei, such as ¹²⁴Sn, with the neutron skin-type and halo-type distributions are calculated. It is found that the parity violating electron scattering can be used to verify the type of the neutron density distribution for neutron-rich stable nuclei.